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This page lists all time most cited articles for this title. Please use the publication date filters on the left if you would like to restrict this list to recently published content, for example to articles published in the last three years. The number of times each article was cited is displayed to the right of its title and can be clicked to access a list of all titles this article has been cited by.

In recent years there has been a major growth of interest in exploring the analogies between the genetic transmission of information from one generation to the next and the processes of cultural transmission, in an attempt to obtain a greater understanding of how culture change occurs. This article uses computer simulation to explore the implications of a specific model of the relationship between demography and innovation within an evolutionary framework. The consequences of innovation appear far more successful in larger populations than in smaller ones. In conclusion, it is suggested that the model has major implications for the origins of modern human culture in the last 50,000 years, which may be seen not as the result of genetic mutations leading to improved cognitive capacities of individuals, but as a population consequence of the demographic growth and increased contact range which are evident at this time. It is also proposed that the model may be of general relevance for understanding the process of cultural evolution in modern and pre-modern humans.

The origins and evolution of modern humans has been the dominant interest in palaeoanthropology for the last decade, and much archaeological interpretation has been structured around the various issues associated with whether humans have a recent African origin or a more ancient one. While the archaeological record has been used to support or refute various aspects of the theories, and to provide a behavioural framework for different biological models, there has been little attempt to employ the evidence of stone tool technology to unravel phylogenetic relationships. Here we examine the evidence that the evolution of modern humans is integrally related to the development of the Upper Palaeolithic and similar technologies, and conclude that there is only a weak relationship. In contrast there is a strong association between the evolution and spread of modern humans and Grahame Clark's Mode 3 technologies (the Middle Stone Age/Palaeolithic). The implications of this for the evolution of Neanderthals, the multiple pattern of human dispersals, and the nature of cognitive evolution, are considered.

This article presents the initial results from the S2AGES data base of calibrated radiocarbon estimates from western Europe in the period 25,000–10,000 years ago. Our aim is to present a population history of this sub-continental region by providing a chronologically-secure framework for the interpretation of data from genetics and archaeology. In particular, we define five population events in this period, using dates-as-data, and examine the implications for the archaeology of Late Glacial colonization. We contrast this detailed regional approach to the larger project which we call the cognitive origins synthesis that includes historical linguistics in the reconstruction of population history. We conclude that only archaeology can currently provide the framework for population history and the evaluation of genetic data. Finally, if progress is to be made in the new interdisciplinary field of population history then both disciplines need to refrain from inappropriate agricultural thinking that fosters distorting models of European prehistory, and they should also pay less, if any, attention to historical linguistics.

With comments from L.G. Straus, J.-P. Bocquet-Appel, P.A. Underhill & R. Housley and followed by a reply from the author.

Storage of symbolic information outside the human brain is accepted here as the first undisputed evidence for cultural modernity. In the hunter-gatherer context of the Stone Age this storage could include artwork, rapidly changing artefact styles and organized spatial layout of campsites. Modern human behaviour in this context is distinguished by a symbolic use of space and material culture to define social relationships, including significant groupings based on attributes such as kinship, gender, age or skill. Symbolism maintains, negotiates, legitimizes and transmits such relationships. It is argued here that artefacts are not inherently imbued with symbolism and that modern human culture cannot be automatically inferred from inventories of archaeologically recovered material culture. Evidence for the out-of-brain storage of symbolism in southern African sites first appears in the final phase of the Middle Stone Age at about 40,000 years ago.

This article examines the possible origins of modern thinking by evaluating the cognitive models of working memory, executive functions and their interrelationship. We propose that a genetic mutation affected neural networks in the prefrontal cortex approximately 60,000 to 130,000 years ago. Our review of cognitive and archaeological evidence yields two possibilities: either it was non-domain specific, affecting general working memory capacity and its executive functions, or the mutation was domain-specific, affecting phonological storage capacity. We discuss the sequelae of these possibilities for modernity, including language enhancement, greater reasoning, planning, and modelling abilities, and increases in fluid/general intelligence.

By 50,000 years ago, the effects of a ‘symbolic explosion’ — an efflorescence of human art, song, dance and ritual — were rippling across the globe. Applied to archaeological evidence, standard neo-Darwinian theory offers new understandings of this improbable event. The present article defines ‘symbolism’, models quasi-ritual behaviour in late archaic Homo sapiens, extends the argument to the emergence of anatomically modern humans and concludes with preliminary tests against archaeological, ethnographic and rock art data.

The importance of chronology is reasserted as a means to achieving history and a sense of temporality. A range of current methods for estimating the dates and durations of archaeological processes and events are considered, including visual inspection of graphs and tables of calibrated dates and the summing of the probability distributions of calibrated dates. These approaches are found wanting. The Bayesian statistical framework is introduced, and a worked example presents simulated radiocarbon dates as a demonstration of the explicit, quantified, probabilistic estimates now possible on a routine basis. Using this example, the reliability of the chronologies presented for the five long barrows considered in this series of papers is explored. It is essential that the ‘informative’ prior beliefs in a chronological model are correct. If they are not, the dating suggested by the model will be incorrect. In contrast, the ‘uninformative’ prior beliefs have to be grossly incorrect before the outputs of the model are importantly wrong. It is also vital that the radiocarbon ages included in a model are accurate, and that their errors are correctly estimated. If they are not, the dating suggested by a model may also be importantly wrong. Strenuous effort and rigorous attention to archaeological and scientific detail are inescapable if reliable chronologies are to be built. The dates presented in the following papers are based on models. ‘All models are wrong, some models are useful’ (Box 1979, 202). We hope readers will find them useful, and will employ ‘worry selectivity’ to determine whether and how each model may be importantly wrong. The questions demand the timetable, and our prehistories deserve both.

This article discusses two major revolutions in the history of humankind, namely, the Neolithic and the Middle to Upper Palaeolithic revolutions. The course of the first one is used as a general analogy to study the second, and the older one. This approach puts aside the issue of biological differences among the human fossils, and concentrates solely on the cultural and technological innovations. It also demonstrates the issues that are common-place to the study of the transition from foraging to cultivation and animal husbandry can be employed as an overarching model for the study of the transition from the Middle to the Upper Palaeolithic. The advantage of this approach is that it focuses on the core areas where each of these revolutions began, the ensuing dispersals and their geographic contexts.

Explicitly symbolic behaviour is usually seen as the hallmark of the behavioural transition from the Middle to the Upper Palaeolithic in Europe. It is suggested here that this new symbolic component is reflected not only in art and personal ornamentation, but also in the design and form of stone tools, and perhaps also in features such as the organization of living structures. All these new features could be argued to reflect the emergence of typically Upper Palaeolithic ‘culture’ and technology. Whether these features can be correlated directly with the transition from archaic to modern skeletal forms remains more problematic; and whether the changes need reflect any significant shift in the neurological capacities for behaviour and cognition is equally controversial.

Use of archaeological evidence in discussions of the origin and evolution of grammar has proved unconvincing largely because of undeveloped theoretical assumptions about the cognitive connection between language and tool behaviour. This paper examines the cognitive basis of tool use and tool making and concludes that there is no sound theoretical basis for inferring grammatical abilities from prehistoric stone tools. Our knowledge concerning the cognitive basis of tool behaviour can, however, be used to document evolutionary developments in hominid cognition. Analysis of early biface culture, for example, reveals a cognitive complexity greater than that demonstrable for the earlier Oldowan or for modern apes.

Few prehistoric developments have received as much attention as the origins of agriculture and its associated societal implications in the Near East. A great deal of this research has focused on correlating the timing of various cultural transformations leading up to farming and village life with dramatic climatic events. Using rigorously selected radiocarbon dates from archaeological sites and palaeoenvironmental datasets, we test the predominate models for culture change from the early Epipalaeolithic to the Pottery Neolithic (c. 23,000–8000 cal. bp) to explore how well they actually fit with well-documented and dated palaeoclimatic events, such as the Bølling-Allerød, Younger Dryas, Preboreal and 8.2 ka event. Our results demonstrate that these correlations are not always as clear or as consistent as some authors suggest. Rather, any relationships between climate change and culture change are more complicated than existing models allow. The lack of fit between these sources of data highlight our need for further and more precise chronological data from archaeological sites, additional localized palaeoclimatic data sets, and more nuanced models for integrating palaeoenvironmental data and prehistoric people's behaviours.

The Levallois technique has attracted much ‘cognitive’ attention in the past decades. Many archaeologists argue that both the products and the procedure of this Palaeolithic technique have been clearly predetermined by the prehistoric flintknappers. Attempts have recently been made to challenge this notion of predetermination by reference to raw material and ‘technological’ constraints. The aim of this article is to assess the grounds on which these claims have been advanced, and then work towards a better establishment of the cognitive implications of Levallois manufacture. Latest developments in the technological understanding of Levallois are presented in their context, and then put to work through a detailed case study: the analysis, in quantitative and qualitative terms, of a comprehensively refitted Levallois core from the 250,000 year-old site of Maastricht Belvédère, in the Netherlands. By reconstructing and following the sequence of work on this highly productive core, it can be shown that its knapping did not simply entail the execution of a pre-set program, nor did it respond in an adventitious manner to external constraints. Rather, it is argued that the course of action was a structured and goal-oriented one, a generative interplay between the mental and material activities of the ancient flintknapper.

In 1987, we published a review of archaeological data that had been interpreted by others as evidence for the making and use of symbols before the Upper Palaeolithic (Chase & Dibble 1987). It has become clear to us since then that our study raises a number of issues we did not address directly. The foregoing critique by Bednarik touches on a few of them, but there are more fundamental issues he does not confront. Also, some of his criticisms seem to stem primarily from a misunderstanding or misreading of our article. What we will do here, then, is to respond briefly to his criticisms (we will not discuss his comments on the work of other authors), and then go on to address some of the important issues that he has not considered.

Australia was colonized by at least 40,000 bp and scientists agree that the continent was only ever occupied by anatomically and behaviourally modern humans. Australia thus offers an alternative early record for the archaeological expression of behavioural modernity. This review finds that the pattern of change in the Australian archaeological sequence bears remarkable similarity to the pattern from the Lower to Upper Palaeolithic in the Old World, a finding that is inconsistent with the ‘symbolic revolution’ model of the origin of modern behaviour. This highlights the need for archaeologists to rethink the implications of the various criteria and scales of analysis used to identify modern human behaviour.

Recent research in historical linguistics suggests that groups or ‘families’ of languages may be classed together into larger language units or ‘macrofamilies’, for which some community of origin has been argued. The Afro-Asiatic macrofamily, for instance, which includes the Semitic and Berber languages as well as Ancient Egyptian and many languages of North and East Africa, is widely accepted among linguists. More controversial is the Nostratic macrofamily (including the Indo-European, the Altaic, the Uralic languages, etc.). The implications for prehistoric archaeology of the existence of such large linguistic units is examined. It is suggested that processes of agricultural dispersal may account for the widespread distribution of some of these macrofamilies.

Analysis of the Taï plaque, the most complex Upper Palaeolithic composition, has revealed evidence of the problem-solving and visual cueing strategies involved in the accumulation of the marks. The composition consists of a boustrophedon sequence of short horizontal containing lines or sections, each of which carries irregular subsets of marks. The analysis proceeded in stages over a period of twenty years, initially with use of a microscope, but did not involve cross-sectional analysis or counting. The theoretical assumption guiding the analysis was that notations represent a cognitive form of visual problem-solving and structuring. A test of the sequence of containing lines and their subsets of marks suggested the notation on the Taï plaque was a non-arithmetic form of lunar/solar observational recording. The analysis, if validated, carries profound implications for our understanding of Upper Palaeolithic culture, and cultural features of the indigenous European population in the periods that followed.

For various reasons increased effort has recently been made to detect the early use of mechanically-projected weaponry in the archaeological record, but little effort has yet been made to investigate explicitly what these tool sets could indicate about human cognitive evolution. Based on recent evidence for the use of bow-and-arrow technology during the Middle Stone Age in southern Africa by 64 kya, we use the method of generating and analysing cognigrams and effective chains to explore thought-and-action sequences associated with this technology. We show that, when isolated, neither the production of a simple bow, nor that of a stone-tipped arrow, can be reasonably interpreted to indicate tool behaviour that is cognitively more complex than the composite artefacts produced by Neanderthals or archaic modern Homo. On the other hand, as soon as a bow-and-arrow set is used as an effective group of tools, a novel cognitive development is expressed in technological symbiosis, i.e. the ability to conceptualize a set of separate, yet inter-dependent tools. Such complementary tool sets are able to unleash new properties of a tool, inconceivable without the active, simultaneous manipulation of another tool. Consequently, flexibility regarding decision-making and taking action is amplified. The archaeological evidence for such amplified conceptual and technological modularization implies a range of cognitive and behavioural complexity and flexibility that is basic to human behaviour today.

Post-processual theorists have characterized landscape archaeology as practised in the second half of the twentieth century as over-empirical. They have asserted that the discipline is sterile, in that it deals inadequately with the people of the past, and is also too preoccupied with vision-privileging and Cartesian approaches. They have argued that it is therefore necessary to ‘go beyond the evidence’ and to develop more experiential approaches, ‘archaeologies of inhabitation’. This article argues that such a critique is misguided, notably in its rejection of long-accepted modes of fieldwork and argument and in its annexation of Cosgrove's rhetoric. ‘Post-processual’ landscape archaeology has involved the development of phenomenological approaches to past landscapes and the writing of hyper-interpretive texts (pioneered by Tilley and Edmonds respectively). It is argued that phenomenological fieldwork has produced highly questionable ‘results’. Some of the theoretical and practical consequences of adopting post-processual landscape archaeology are discussed; it is concluded that the new approaches are more problematic than their proponents have allowed. Although new thinking should always be welcomed, it would not be advisable to abandon the heuristic, argument-grounded strengths of conventional landscape archaeology.

It is often the case in interdisciplinary accounts of human evolution that archaeological data are either ignored or treated superficially. This article sets out to redress this position by using archaeological evidence from the last 2.5 million years to test the social brain hypothesis (SBH) – that our social lives drove encephalization. To do this we construct a map of our evolving social complexity that concentrates on two resources – materials and emotions – that lie at the basis of all social interaction. In particular, novel cultural and biological mechanisms are seen as evolutionary responses to problems of cognitive load arising from the need to integrate more individuals and sub-units into the larger communities predicted by the SBH. The Palaeolithic evidence for the amplification of these twin resources into novel social forms is then evaluated. Here the SBH is used to differentiate three temporal movements (2.6–1.6 Ma, 1.5–0.4 Ma and 300–25 ka) and their varied evolutionary responses are described in detail. Attention is drawn to the second movement where there is an apparent disconnect between a rise in encephalization and a stasis in material culture. This disconnect is used to discuss the co-evolutionary relationship that existed between materials and emotions to solve cognitive problems but which, at different times, amplified one resource rather than the other. We conclude that the shape of the Palaeolithic is best conceived as a gradient of change rather than a set of step-like revolutions in society and culture.

Whether Neanderthals were capable of behaviours commonly held to be the exclusive preserve of modern humans — such as abstract thought, language, forward planning, art, reverence of the dead, complex technology, etc. — has remained a fundamental question in human evolutionary studies since their discovery more than a hundred years ago. A lack of quantitative data on Neanderthal symbolism and complex behaviour is a key obstacle to the resolution of this question, with temporal analyses usually confined to single regions or short time periods. Here we present an approach to the issue of symbolism and complex behaviours among Neanderthals that examines the frequency of key proxies for symbolic and complex behaviours through time, including burials, modified raw materials, use of pigments, use of composite technology and body modification. Our analysis demonstrates that the number and diversity of complex Neanderthal behaviours increases between 160,000 and 40,000 years ago. Whether this pattern derives from preservation factors, the evolution of cognitive and behavioural complexity, cumulative learning, or population size is discussed. We take the view that it is not the apparent sophistication of a single specific item, nor the presence or absence of particular types in the archaeological record that is important. Instead, we believe that it is the overall abundance of artefacts and features indicative of complex behaviours within the Neanderthal archaeological record as a whole that should provide the mark of Neanderthal capabilities and cultural evolutionary potential.